New taxi strike scheduled on March 23 from 8 to 22. The guarantee bands will be respected and social services will be insured during the strike, i.e. the transport of the elderly, the handicapped and the sick.
Taxi drivers they refuse the invitation to dialogue from Uber, who would like to formulate common proposals to reform the sector, but this time the public service front is not compact: they have proclaimed the mobilization UNica Cgil, Fit Cisl Taxi, Ugl Trasporti Taxi, Ugl Taxi, Federtaxi Cisal, Usb Taxi, Uti and Unimpresa , while Uri, Uritaxi, Casartigiani and Confartigianato have not signed the document. Other acronyms have reserved the right to join later.
“Once again we have been humiliated: the government has been unable to provide any sort of response to simple questions, hiding behind the sovereignty of parliament,” reads the taxi drivers' document.
“The government cannot keep the gun pointed at our head with the competition bill and ask us to sit at the table for the implementing decrees,” said Valter Drovetto, Ugl Taxi deputy secretary during the meeting.
"A service which every day, despite a thousand difficulties, guarantees an essential right for users, such as that of mobility - say FIt Cisl taxi, Uil Trasporti taxi, Ugl taxi, Federtaxi Cisal and Usb taxi in a note - cannot be abandoned to speculative aims of large economic groups and devastated by illegal practices”.
Meanwhile, Uber has sent a letter to all unions in the taxi sector to propose "a meeting behind closed doors" on Monday 20 March at the Frentani Congress Center, in via Dei Frentani in Rome at 12.00. "I think it is right to try the path of dialogue, opening the door to a civil and honest confrontation", writes the general manager of Uber Italia, Carlo Tursi, to the taxi drivers.
“As general manager of Uber – he continues – a technology company that for too long has been seen in opposition to the taxi service, I invite you to discuss concrete proposals that can see us collaborate from here on out. Too much time has been spent on a comparison that does not look to the future but only to the past, also penalizing consumers who are not to blame for this. We want to look to the future and we would like to do it with you too”.
But Loreno Bittarelli, president of the Italian Radiotaxi Union (URI), refused any dialogue: "We will not accept this invitation. Sitting at a table with Uber would mean legitimizing a company that operates outside the rules”.
